Sunday 15th October, 2006 – Out of the hotel, Finally!

I stayed up all Saturday night, watching TV and then later chatting with Twum from around 6am till 8am when I finally went to bed. I woke up at 11am, so I could check out from Marina Hotel by noon. If I hadn’t, I would have to pay for an extra night. After checking out, I tipped Inam, the security guy, and the quiet guy in the glasses who used to bring my food up when I ordered room service. Inam found me a taxi and the driver took me safely to Saptaparni. At the gate, I had to sign in with the security men, who then called up Mrs. Sanyal to verify that she was expecting me. I asked the driver how much the trip cost, but he didn’t understand me, so I took out my language book and tried to ask how much in Hindu and Bengali. The guy understood Bengali, but I didn’t understand his response, so I called one of the security men for help. The trip cost me Rs. 50.

After getting up to the 14^th floor apartment and putting my luggage in my room, I chatted with Mrs. Kamal Sanyal for quite a while, before having lunch of Dal (a lentil soup), sliced okra, green beans, carp in mustard sauce, boiled rice, and a dessert of rice pudding with almonds, and shortbread-like cookies. I also learnt how to make rice pudding (by mouth). The trick is to cook the rice in the milk, instead of boiling it in water and then later adding the milk. J I was quite tired as per my all-nighter, so I took a nap, and was woken up at 5:30pm by Naran, the man who works for my host. He gave me water and coffee, and then I went back to bed till 7:30pm.

After waking up I watched a little TV with Mrs. Sanyal, and we talked about the war in Iraq and stuff like that. I told her about the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 and promised her a copy of the movie. I had a lovely dinner of Aloo Paratha (aloo is the name of potato…hehehe! I’m learning some phrases), Raita (Radha, I now understand your love for Raita. This one was really good, and it had all these vegetables in it), pickled mango, pumpkin and onion stir-fry, and custard for dessert. I called Twum and gave him the apartment’s number, and then got ready for bed after taking a shower (as if they knew, my bathroom is all green! Yay!).

So, for those of you worrying about me being all alone in a hotel, you can rest easy now, because I’m living in a lovely place now. I can see almost a third of the city from my windows!!